An Eye on Rye

At home most especially in northern climes and their corresponding latitudes in the southern hemisphere, breads made from rye are highly iconic in local and international identities, witness the Rye Route that runs through Estonia, where the National Agricultural Museum in Ülenurme, south of Tartu, held AIMA’s 2017 congress (1). Rye bread in many forms… Continue reading An Eye on Rye

Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

Editor’s Note: This contribution by Tatiana Minniyakhmetova comes to the AIMA thanks to a collaborative effort with the Ritual Year Working Group, a section of the S.I.E.F. (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) https://www.siefhome.org/wg/ry/  Its members are experts in calendar studies of all hues and, often as a consequence, in food cultures and festive events… Continue reading Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising

In the medieval Occident, ‘the countryside is everything’: nearly 90% of the population tilled the earth, and in the portals of churches, in frescos, stained glass windows or in prayer books, we see ever and again the works of the months, most of them relating directly to the main sectors of agriculture – grain-growing, wine-production… Continue reading What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising

From a 350-million-year-old fossil to a contemporary glass sculpture, the story of an artwork that was a long time in the making.

The Creeping and The Wise by Anne Vibeke Mou. (Photo by John McKenzie) In 2018 UK-based artist Anne Vibeke Mou embarked upon a research project exploring the history of the North of Scotland’s kelp industry (kelp ash was once used as an ingredient for glass making), as part of her ongoing work A Botany of… Continue reading From a 350-million-year-old fossil to a contemporary glass sculpture, the story of an artwork that was a long time in the making.

AIMA Conference in India – 13-18 October 2023

AIMA is pleased to announce the 20th triennial conference in India, with two hosts: Shoolini University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh; and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab. The dates are 13, 14 and 15 October 2023 at Shoolini University and 16, 17, and 18 at Punjab Agricultural University which includes the oldest agricultural museum in Punjab, the… Continue reading AIMA Conference in India – 13-18 October 2023

Agriculture & the International Year of Glass 2022

Agriculture? Glass? What’s the connection? Fig. 1. Stained Glass Panel, Labours of the Months (October – breaking up clods and scattering wheat), 1450-1475, England. From Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire. Source: Commons Wikimedia. Have you ever thought about how farmers and market gardeners care for “baby” plants, for example, by covering them with a glass cloche to… Continue reading Agriculture & the International Year of Glass 2022

The Agricultural Year in Stained glass: Labours of the Month from medieval to present day

Humans are creatures of habit, and since the prehistoric era have kept track of time. A popular artistic representation of the calendar year from the medieval period onwards were Labours of the month, each of which symbolised a month of the year and depicted a relevant seasonal agricultural activity or pastime. Labours of the Month… Continue reading The Agricultural Year in Stained glass: Labours of the Month from medieval to present day

Stained Glass Windows in the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa, Poland

Creator: Maria Powalisz-Bardońska (1935-2021) Established in: 1974 Material: lead, metal, overglaze paint, stained glass (patinated), tin (tin binder) Dimensions (in meters): Height: 2.20 Width: 4 Origin: Stained Glass Workshop Powalisz, Poznań Inventory no .: A-959 / 1-2 These stained-glass windows consist of 15 sections (five sections horizontally, in three rows) of colored glass patinated at… Continue reading Stained Glass Windows in the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa, Poland

Rise and decline of the Mechelen greenhouse, today an honored object of cultural heritage in Flanders

Fig. 1. Oldest conservatory of the Mechelen type in neighbouring Sint-Katelijne-Waver. The emergence of the Mechelen (English: Mechlin, French Malines) greenhouse type coincided with the rise of vegetable cultivation in this area of Flanders in Belgium, developing in the late nineteenth century, so that it became a typical feature of the open-ground horticulture on vegetable… Continue reading Rise and decline of the Mechelen greenhouse, today an honored object of cultural heritage in Flanders

Your good seed for the day

Fig. 1. Source: The Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka In celebration of the International Year of Glass, we wish to show the readers some interesting glass artefacts in the Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka collection. These small bottles resemble an egg standing on a funnel-shaped leg (Fig. 1). Most of them do not have visible… Continue reading Your good seed for the day

Milk distribution and the Glass Bottle in India – an overview

Of the 186 million litres of milk produced in India in 2020, around 85 percent was obtained from small dairy farmers (less than 10 cattle). In rural India, milk is home delivered, daily, by local milkmen carrying bulk quantities in a metal container, usually on a bicycle. The current milk chain flow in India is… Continue reading Milk distribution and the Glass Bottle in India – an overview

Making flat glass and lighting up life: Glass in the Bulskampveld Collection at the Centre for Agrarian History in Belgium

For many years, glass had a rather modest use due to the limitations of traditional glass blowing. It was not until the 19th century that it was possible to produce industrially large surfaces of flat glass. There are several methods for manufacturing glass. Only the glass blowing method for flat glass is represented in the… Continue reading Making flat glass and lighting up life: Glass in the Bulskampveld Collection at the Centre for Agrarian History in Belgium

A load of old rubbish? But it still has lots of stories to tell…Glass from the middens of Auchindrain Township

Editor’s Note: This post will also introduce you to the pleasure of reading names in Scottish Gaelic – like Auchindrain’s name here, “Bail’ Ach’ an Droighinn”, or the for the people who live there, Na Droighnich.   Bail’ Ach’ an Droighinn/Auchindrain Township (spoken “achan-dray-in”) is a 9-hectare museum and historic site in the west of… Continue reading A load of old rubbish? But it still has lots of stories to tell…Glass from the middens of Auchindrain Township